The mobile that sends SMELLS: 'oPhone' receives and creates scents to make messages more memorable
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A professor plans to send the first smell text message via a device he has dubbed the 'oPhone'
A professor plans to send the first smell text message via a device he has dubbed the 'oPhone'.
David Edwards will send the scent through an app on his iPhone to a colleague in Paris.
The oPhone will then decode the message and create the smell using different scents it has built inside of it.
Professor Edwards, of Harvard's school of engineering, believes that one day we could be sending smell messages as frequently as we do texts or pictures.
He believes it is the world's 'natural Tweet' as it takes just a few seconds to get it.
If the test is a success he wants to have scent-tagged images available via Facebook and Twitter with oPhone-fitted hotspots around the world that can produce the odours.
Professor Edwards will use an iPhone app called oSnap to compose his scent which has 32 unique smells that can be combined for a total of 300,000 possibilities.
If he wants to create a pizza smell, for example, he would use scents like cheese, tomato and onion.
The message will be received by Christophe Laudamiel, a perfumer and fragrance chemist at Le Laboratoire, a contemporary art and design centre in Paris.
He will press his nose to one of the two small turrets of the oPhone, which looks like an old fashioned video game joystick.
Professor Edwards said: 'Scent is the world's natural tweet, because it takes just a few seconds to get a scent.
David Edwards will send the scent through an app on his iPhone to a colleague in Paris. The oPhone (pictured) will then decode the message and create the smell using different scents it has built inside of it
'The notion of people saying, "I miss you in New York," by sending a scent is really interesting and powerful. Or imagine taking a scent selfie and posting it on Facebook.'
Professor Edwards said he plans to launch a crowdsourcing campaign to fund his company Vapor Communications so it can manufacture oPhones on a large scale.
They will be available for pre-sale and will be produced in early 2015 for $149, or around £100.
Professor Edwards said that he hoped it would be used in bakeries and coffee shops where smell is important.
He said: 'In the near term, we'll go where there are obvious business applications - places where the quality of aroma is associated with the quality of the product or experience'.
Technology has tried for decades to work out a way to send smell messages to the public.
Newspapers have long used 'scratch n sniff' for perfume adverts and gimmicky giveaways.
In the 1950s 'Smell-o-Vision' was introduced to cinemas which released an odour as a film played so that the audience could smell what was going on.
IPHONE APP REPLACES ALARM WITH THE SMELL OF FRIED BREAKFAST
For many people a hearty fried breakfast including a couple of rashers of bacon is a desirable way to start the day.
But as cooked breakfast or a bacon sandwich isn't the healthiest option, a new iPhone app and device that wafts the appealing smell of the cured meat could prove to be a more sensible option.
The alarm clock app wakes a person up with the sound of sizzling bacon, while a connected scent device emits a bacon perfume.
The 'wake up and smell the bacon' app has been developed by Oscar Mayer – a manufacturer of bacon and other meats in the U.S.
While the iPhone app is readily available and free to download, the accompanying device is not for sale, but a limited were devloped by the company as part of a competition that ran in April.
Oscar Mayer's alarm clock app wakes a person up with the sound of sizzling bacon, while a connected scent device (pictured) emits a bacon perfume
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